


The She-Wolves of Mibu

by waterscroll



Category: Hakuouki
Genre: F/M, Ficlet Collection, Genderswap, Implied/Referenced Death in Childbirth, M/M, Rule 63, violence against animals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24325624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterscroll/pseuds/waterscroll
Summary: Short ficlets set in a genderbent Hakuouki AU.  Chizuru is a man, the Shinsengumi are all women, other characters are their canonical or historical genders.
Relationships: Hijikata Toshizou/Yukimura Chizuru, Kazama Chikage/Yukimura Chizuru, Okita Souji/Yukimura Chizuru, Saitou Hajime/Yukimura Chizuru, Toudou Heisuke/Yukimura Chizuru, Yamanami "Sannan" Keisuke/Yukimura Chizuru
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	1. Hijikata 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Scytale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scytale/gifts), [sqbr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sqbr/gifts).



> In this AU, Chizuru is a man, the Shinsengumi are all women, other characters are their canonical or historical genders. Most routes are het except for the routes with non-Shinsengumi characters (Kazama for now, and Sakamoto and Iba if I get around to writing them) which are m/m. 
> 
> The title of each chapter should tell you the route that each ficlet is on. As in canon, Chizuru's characterization is going to be a little bit different depending on the route. I do a lot of quoting from the game with pronouns shifted, and I'm a little inconsistent about which version of the game I quote from.
> 
> I'm taking requests, so if there's a particular scene you'd like to see in this universe please let me know. The rating may go up as I add more ficlets and tags may be added.
> 
> Scytale wrote some beautiful poetry set in this AU, which you can find [here](https://scytale.dreamwidth.org/14477.html).

The woman holding a sword to Chizuru’s neck was the most beautiful he had ever seen. Chizuru was a doctor’s son and had grown up away from politics but even he had heard of Hijikata, the terrifying vice-commander of the Shinsengumi, the she-wolves of Mibu, a savage group of women ronin. He hadn’t imagined she would be beautiful, her hair like cherry trees blooming out of season. Blue-white moonlight lit her slender face and shone from her blade. There was no doubt in her eyes that she was prepared to kill him, and yet she looked troubled. There was no kindness in her, but perhaps there would be mercy? 

Chizuru’s father was gone and Chizuru didn’t know where or why. This attack had taught him that all his self-defence training was worthless. But it was more than protection that he needed. He needed hope. Hijikata’s eyes defied him to find it.

“I won’t run,” Chizuru promised. He did run, eventually, but it was only the once, before he learned to take Hijikata’s orders. Before he’d learned that her will was as sharp and as beautiful as her steel and that he would follow her to the end of their world.


	2. Saito 1

Saito’s body was a sword, a precise instrument for her life as a warrior. Each stroke was defined and quick, there was no need for further elaboration. Chizuru had been taught by his master well, his blade was unclouded, and his purpose for coming to Kyoto was clear. With deep respect Saito sent Chizuru’s sword to the ground and her own blade to his neck.

“You thought you could kill Saito?” Souji had asked, falling over with laughter at the boy who imagined he could fight in a way equal to theirs. As a girl Souji had needed to prove herself to the men around her. Saito had never had that need, since from the moment she had first raised her blade there was never any doubt that she could kill. As a left-handed fighter only her honor was questioned.

Later, Saito helped Chizuru find clothes fit for a woman page, since no man could live among the women of the Shinsengumi. Saito had learned long ago that when a body is covered people see only what they imagine. No one had thought her a woman for many years, until she came to the Shinsengumi, sword strapped to her right side, to be drawn by her left hand.


	3. Heisuke 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Scytale wrote a beautiful poem based on this [here](https://scytale.dreamwidth.org/14477.html).

Chizuru was in a proper women’s kimono, his hair done up with a flower. Heisuke had never been able to pull off clothes like that herself, not even back when she was a dancer, just like she’d never been able to restrain herself to the fine, controlled movements that were appropriate to an entertainer. The dojo was a better fit for her. As a warrior, Heisuke had learned to move with all the energy in her limbs, feeling all the joy in it. 

Her father, whom she’d never met, sent her a family sword. It was a strange present to a bastard girl from a father who hadn’t considered her worth a visit, but Heisuke wore it anyway. She wondered if she’d ever be able to wear it at the same time as a flower in her hair.

Chizuru, unlike Heisuke, wasn’t a fighter. He was as lovely in his way as the dancers of Shimabara that Heisuke still loved to watch, restrained in his actions, as patient and as calm in his motions as the finest dance.


	4. Sanan 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: this chapter contains references to death in childbirth.
> 
> Many thanks to sqbr for telling me about the South East Asian pontianak and directing me to [this](http://giganotosaurus.org/2011/12/01/the-house-of-aunts/) story.
> 
> Scytale wrote a beautiful poem based on this [here](https://scytale.dreamwidth.org/14477.html).

Sanan was the midwife of last resort. Chizuru been aware of that even before he watched her transform and nearly end his life with her hands. But tonight she needed his help. She knocked on his door and he immediately followed her, with the quick reward of Sanan’s precious smile for his eager service. 

Chizuru had admired Sanan from the beginning and her transformation into a fury had done nothing to change that. He knew that she was kind to the soldiers that served alongside her and he knew that she was the one that women called when a mother giving birth was definitely, inevitably going to die.

But now Sanan couldn’t do this on her own. The blood would be too much. As a boy Chizuru had never been able to help his father deliver children but he knew the process, more or less. Sanan went over with him what he would have to do. Chizuru’s women’s clothes would allow him to be present without causing discomfort. He would need to get the baby out, by any means necessary, and away from the mother, and clean up the blood before Sanan could come in to give the woman the drink that would allow her to survive. Sanan shook as they walked, her hair turned white by even the thought of all the bleeding. Chizuru wanted to take her in his arms and hold her until the shaking stopped, to give her the blood from his own body, but something he didn’t understand frightened him into silence.

“She will be a soldier, one of the Shinsengumi, and she will never see her child again,” Sanan said. “You must make sure she understands, Yukimura-kun. But she will live. Make sure she understands, and allow her to choose.”

Sanan’s hair was white in the moonlight. Chizuru watched her, and although he thought he knew he couldn’t help but wonder what choice Sanan wanted this women to make.


	5. Heisuke 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heisuke is leaving with Itou's faction and takes a moment to try to explain why.

Chizuru ran to find Heisuke and Saito as they were leaving. He wanted to know why they were leaving the Shinsengumi and why they had decided to follow Itou. Heisuke scratched at her nose, looked down awkwardly, and explained, “Well, Itou and I were from the same school. She’s my senior, obviously. She joined the Shinsengumi because I invited her. So I feel like I’m obligated to stick with her.”

The Shingengumi was the first women's militia but some few women had found their way into mostly-male dojos, Itou and Heisuke among them. Chizuru thought of what it must have been like for Heisuke as a girl, before she came to the Shinsengumi, and what a teacher like Itou must have done for her. It made sense that Heisuke would want to stick with her, after everything they’d been through together. But Chizuru still wanted Heisuke to stay. 

“I’m not one of Itou’s followers,” Heisuke said, “but I was and am a national imperialist.” There was something in her profile that seemed heartbreakingly lonely, but her mouth was a hard line. Her mind was made up. But it was hard for Chizuru to care. Heisuke had been his best friend since he’d joined the Shinsengumi, had always been there for her, and it didn’t make sense that she was leaving, even for an old friend.

“Aren’t we your friends?” Chizuru asked. There was still time, if he could convince her...

“Don’t say that,” Heisuke said. “It took a lot of time, and lot of hard thinking, to make this decision.”

The firmness of Heisuke’s statement, so unlike her usual hesitation, made Chizuru stop and listen. “Do you really think you could fight your friends, like Saito?” Chizuru asked, frightened that the answer might be yes. He never wanted to be Heisuke’s enemy.

“I, um,” she said. She was honest and straightforward but didn’t have a way with words like some of the other women of the Shinsengumi. “Hey,” she said. “Why don’t we go to the courtyard?”

They sat down on a bench together in the warm sunlight. “I know that...everybody...doesn’t like Itou too much,” Heisuke said. “But I don’t think she’s wrong, at least not completely. I don’t think there’s much of a future if we continue doing what the shogunate says. I’m sure we’re only disposable pawns for the shogunate’s higher-ups.”

All of Chizuru’s being ached at the thought of Heisuke leaving him. He couldn’t help but admire her determination, her insistance, on not being a pawn and on finding her own path. But was it possible for her? Was it possible for any of them?

“I spent a lot of time talking with Itou,” Heisuke said, “about the corruption of the shogunate and how bad a state Japan is in right now.” Chizuru couldn’t help wondering about the years Heisuke and Itou had spend going from dojo to dojo trying to find a place that would accept two women. Perhaps they’d seen more corruption than most. Or worse things than corruption. “I don’t think that Itou is right about everything, but I do think that Itou is taking what’s going on right now into consideration. And seeing how Itou reacted last night, it opened my eyes.”

And there it was. Chizuru’s own father had developed the fury serum, but the way it was sent here, of all places, showed just how much the shogunate valued its militia of women fighters. They weren’t just pawns, they were bodies to be used. Even a brave woman like Heisuke was nothing to the shogunate but a tool. 

“I think we stopped questioning those things,” Heisuke said. “It just became part of what we had to accept. But what if we don’t have to accept it?”

“Heisuke,” Chizuru said. He didn’t want to stop her anymore. How could he?

“I just want you to know one thing, though,” Heisuke said. “It doesn’t mean I’m not your friend. I just want you to know that.”

“I know,” Chizuru said. “I just wanted to stay with you a little longer.” Heisuke was going to go, there was no reason not to be honest. 

“Thanks,” Heisuke said, and her smile was like the sun. “It’s good to know you feel that way.”

In another universe, they could have been matched by their fathers and Heisuke would have been the most beautiful bride in all of Japan. It sits unspoken between them, that this universe isn’t the one they live in and never will be, and Heisuke is going to keep pushing back against this bad universe until it gets better, and they might never see each other again.

And maybe, Chizuru thought, maybe if he took Heisuke in his arms and kissed her, maybe she would stay. So he didn’t do it. “Thank you for telling me how you really feel,” he said, instead, and watched Heisuke’s smile return. Chizuru kept the memory of Heisuke’s smile with him for a long time.


	6. Saito 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Saito is leaving with Itou's faction and takes a moment to say goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Scytale wrote a beautiful poem based on this [here](https://scytale.dreamwidth.org/14477.html).

“Joining Itou and her soldiers serves my own ambition,” Saito said. “Kondo and Hijikata are mistaken. The expulsion of the foreign influence can no longer be left to the Shogunate. If I must set my feelings for the Shinsengumi aside to fulfil my own ambitions then I will.”

It almost made sense to Chizuru, but not quite. Saito had been Chizuru’s ally and even, if he could say so, friend. “How could you do this?” he blurted out. “We’ve been together for so long. Now you’re just going to abandon us?” He hadn’t intended it, but all that came out of his mouth were accusations. 

“Because we worked together once, we must always work together?” Saito asked, her voice dangerous. “Do you believe that I should stay here out of a sense of sisterhood? One must master their emotions or be mastered by them. To let emotion guide my judgement is the beginning of the end.”

Had Saito destroyed her own heart to become a warrior? But Chizuru knew it wasn’t just that. For Saito, being a warrior was the full expression of what she truly was. How could it be at odds with her emotions?

“Can you ignore your feelings so easily?” Chizuru asked. 

Saito stood with Chizuru for a moment and then moved silently towards one of the blossoming cherry trees that covered the temple grounds. “How many of these blossoms have I seen since I came to Kyoto?” Saito said. There was a sadness in her eyes, it seemed, although it might have been Chizuru’s imagination. “As time passes, things change. The world, people’s ideas, even the Shinsengumi.” She reached out gently and let a single petal fall on to her palm. 

“Are we changing too?” Chizuru asked. “Is that why you’re leaving, because we’ve changed?”

Chizuru knew that he had changed so much since coming to the Shinsengumi. But it wasn’t all change. There was something that had stayed the same, something between them, and that mattered too.

Saito didn’t answer, only looked up at the cherry trees. Nothing Chizuru could say would mattter, her mind was already made up. “Even so,” she said at last, with a small smile, “that does not mean that everything must change. As times change, and as life changes with it, there are some things that do not change. I believe in those things that do not change.”

None of this completely made sense, or explained why Saito had to go with Itou. But as long as Saito did not change, as long as she was still a woman who could look at cherry blossoms and smile, Chizuru thought that he could still endure. As long as Saito doesn't change, Chizuru knew that he could also stay what he was.

Chizuru had learned from Saito that strength and certainty of purpose go beyond whether one is a man or a woman, whether one draws one's sword with the right or the left hand. Surely it can bridge the distance between the Shinsengumi and the Guardians of the Imperial Tomb. If so, perhaps their hearts, steadfast in purpose, could in some sense remain together.

He asked for the petal from Saito’s hand. When she was gone, Chizuru kept it in a locket, close to his heart.


	7. Kazama 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since non-Shinsengumi characters are their canonical genders, the Kazama route is m/m.

Demon men are rare. They are also necessary for the survival of their clans. Only demon men have the physical strength to protect their people from the humans. In recent years the terrible scarcity of demon men has meant deploying them strategically, to lend their strength to human allies in exchange for protection. 

Allies needed to be wisely chosen. The Tokugawas that the Yukimura clan had chosen for their allies had failed to protect them, leading to their devastation. Their only surviving son, continuing his clan’s foolishness, had chosen to ally with the pro-shogunate pesant women of Shinsengumi. 

Kazama watched Chizuru from a distance as he ran with the Shinsengumi to the Ikedaya inn. Among humans the difference in strength between men and women is not so great and both are far weaker than male demons. Kazama had never fought against a demon on the opposing side and did not wish to but it seemed that that time might come. But it didn’t. Instead of fighting, Chizuru ran to bind the wounds of the Shinsengumi soldiers. The sword once dual-wielded by his ancestor the great warrior Kazuya Yukimura hung uselessly at his hip.

It was baffling to watch. Did Chizuru not know the power of a demon man? And if he was so ignorant, how could he be so fearless? 

One day soon Kazama would need to come for him. He would take him away from the Shinsengumi back to his clan. He would train him in everything a demon man needs to know. It was necessary for the demons as a whole, since demon men were necessary. But there was another reason, like an itch in Kazama’s soul. He wanted to know this man, to understand him. So little about him made sense, and Kazama wanted to know why.

He would come for Chizuru soon. The peasant women of the Shinsengumi could not protect him, not from the strength of a male demon.


	8. Okita 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set pre-series. Warning for graphic descriptions of violence against animals.

After her parents died there wasn’t any food. Her sister Mitsu found a husband but he was also poor. Souji scrounged fruits and sweets, she was quick with her hands and could grab them when people weren't looking.

“We could find you a husband,” Mitsu said. Souji knew she was pretty. At ten she was young to be married, but it wouldn’t be impossible. Early the next morning she grabbed a rat from the streets, broke its neck and left it in Mitsu’s bed. It got blood everywhere and Mitsu never brought up the question of a husband for Souji again.

A week later Souji saw Mitsu walking in the direction of the entertainment quarter. There was certainly work that could be found for young girls there. And, well, Mitsu could do whatever she wanted but there was no work there for Souji. That night she skinned a cat and left it in Mitsu’s bed, alongside a flower crown as a half of an apology. It was a shame, Souji did usually like cats.

Souji missed her parents. They’d never tried to make her do anything. 

“There’s a woman in one of the dojos,” Mitsu said a few weeks later. “She teaches self-defense to Samurai ladies, and sometimes even to peasant women. It took me a long time to find her.” Mitsu let out a breath. “I hope this works.” 

The woman’s name was Kondo Isami and she carried two swords like a warrior. Everything was going to need to change. Souji would have to work now, but that might be ok. This might be worth working for. She’d be better at killing than anyone.

“Please, teacher,” Souji bowed low. “Please take care of me.”

Kondo acknowledged her and Souji beamed. She didn’t look back at her sister as she stepped forward into the dojo and into her new life.


End file.
